Netflix relies on Silverlight for DRM protection, and, as we know, Silverlight is MS only, and Moonlight is a couple of versions behind, and therefore not usable for Netflix.
A few workarounds are possible
1) Run Windows in a VM, and run Netflix there. If you have a fast machine, it works well.
2) Run a Windows browser in WINE. That sort of works. (This appears to be what the Netflix Desktop package in the Canonical repository does.)
However, those enterprising coders are brilliant in their efforts to simplify.
Some years ago, when driver support was lacking in Linux, NDIS Wrapper was used to run Windows wireless card drivers on Linux. It worked quite well.
The same idea is being done now for Silverlight with a browser plug-in called Pipelight. Pipelight runs only Silverlight (not the whole browser) on a specially patched version of WINE, allowing your native Linux browser access to the Silverlight decoder. Slick idea! (The plugin will run other Windows tools like Flash and Shockwave and a few others as well).
I tried it last night on my recently upgraded 14.04 installation. Works fine! I used Firefox 29, but I understand that it will work with Chrome as well (though I have not tried it yet).
One does have to install another extension - uacontrol - so that Firefox will 'lie' to the Netflix website, as otherwise even with Silverlight enabled, Netflix will just not send a stream to a Linux browser. There are two ways to get your browser to 'lie' -- either globally, or per website. I chose 'per website', and that requires inputting a specific agent string. I found it important to cut and paste that string from the above-linked instructions for installing Pipelight, as when I typed them in, it didn't work.
I was also concerned that my one Windows program that I have been running on the standard version of WINE would not work with the custom one used by Pipelight. I see that both are installed, and do not conflict with each other.
On this older Core-2 Duo with an 8400 somethingorother nVidia passively cooled video card, frames are very slightly jerky, but entirely watchable. I would imagine that with a better video card, it would be just fine.
So, if you want Netflix on Linux, Pipelight seems to deliver quite well!
My thanks to the 'how to' article in the April Issue of Linux Format for pointing me to this product.
Frank.
A few workarounds are possible
1) Run Windows in a VM, and run Netflix there. If you have a fast machine, it works well.
2) Run a Windows browser in WINE. That sort of works. (This appears to be what the Netflix Desktop package in the Canonical repository does.)
However, those enterprising coders are brilliant in their efforts to simplify.
Some years ago, when driver support was lacking in Linux, NDIS Wrapper was used to run Windows wireless card drivers on Linux. It worked quite well.The same idea is being done now for Silverlight with a browser plug-in called Pipelight. Pipelight runs only Silverlight (not the whole browser) on a specially patched version of WINE, allowing your native Linux browser access to the Silverlight decoder. Slick idea! (The plugin will run other Windows tools like Flash and Shockwave and a few others as well).
I tried it last night on my recently upgraded 14.04 installation. Works fine! I used Firefox 29, but I understand that it will work with Chrome as well (though I have not tried it yet).
One does have to install another extension - uacontrol - so that Firefox will 'lie' to the Netflix website, as otherwise even with Silverlight enabled, Netflix will just not send a stream to a Linux browser. There are two ways to get your browser to 'lie' -- either globally, or per website. I chose 'per website', and that requires inputting a specific agent string. I found it important to cut and paste that string from the above-linked instructions for installing Pipelight, as when I typed them in, it didn't work.
I was also concerned that my one Windows program that I have been running on the standard version of WINE would not work with the custom one used by Pipelight. I see that both are installed, and do not conflict with each other.
On this older Core-2 Duo with an 8400 somethingorother nVidia passively cooled video card, frames are very slightly jerky, but entirely watchable. I would imagine that with a better video card, it would be just fine.
So, if you want Netflix on Linux, Pipelight seems to deliver quite well!
My thanks to the 'how to' article in the April Issue of Linux Format for pointing me to this product.
Frank.
Undoubtedly, there will be some other proprietary plugin for DRM to replace what we are already able to work around.
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